Day 5 NaNoWriMo

Well, day 5 has come to an end and I can't say that I am proud of myself. I'm just over 3,000 words. Done with chapter one, yes, but nothing to be proud of. I am already behind, that's normal so I'm not worried, but I have a day off coming up soon. Maybe then I can get some big numbers down.

3 Pages of Plot

As part of this year's NaNoWriMo I am pulling out every trick I have. Including mapping out a plot. Took me 3 pages of hand written notes, but I am so ready to start this year's challenge.

NaNoWriMo 2017 prep

Okay, so as I'm sure you all know, November is just a few days away. Now, for the part that you might not know is that it's national novel writing month. It's a challenge to write a new book from start, to at least 50,000 words in the span of said month. I'm about to do it again.

This year, I'd be curious to see if any of you would be interested in following my personal goals and progress.

What's it about?

Glad you asked. It's a fantasy novel that follows a tribal man who's life gets turned upside down when he is sold into slave trade. His adventures only grown from there as he not only finds himself, but adventures with a band of pirates, finds love, and must make the hard choice of happiness, or to save the world.



I'm so excited for this year. I'm also already behind. Gotta finish up my character sheets!

Writers and day jobs

I was chatting with one of my writing friends and found out that as of a few days ago, he quit his day job and is writing full time. I got oddly excited at the thought, even though I have no plans of quitting my day job. I asked how long it took him to get there.

"10 years I've been writing." He answered.

I could feel my heart break.

As someone who has only recently come to the conclusion that writing is my thing, I knew it wouldn't happen overnight. On the other hand, I didn't realize that it would take so long either.

As of today I've been published for about 3 years now, and honestly even with all the progress that I have made, I don't feel like I am anywhere near where I should be.

My heart breaks again.

The numbers hurt, I won't lie. The months with .35 cent paychecks from book sales, hurts.

I keep going though. I do it for myself. For my readers. I do it for the LGBTQ persons who have not found their comfort yet.

I will write on.
I will continue my journey.

I hate not having internet.

The title sums it all up. Yeah, sure, I can type on my phone. But it's not the same. At least not here. It also eats my limited data because this cat it too broke to get the unlimited plan. Maybe one day I can return to my love of writing.

Busy Little Kitty

     Radio silence has returned to your dash due to the crazy fact that my new job has been working the heck out of me. I'm on week three and already pulling over time and working 8 days in a row. Tomorrow I have some class that I have to go to and I'm kinda excited.

     The up side of all this, is my brain is always working and I cannot wait to get myself into a better writing habit. I just need to wait until our new location is open.

I Love Being a Lesbian

     Like really, most days it's just my favorite thing to do, not even in a sexual way. I work at an AMAZING place who is very LGBT friendly. Like even worldwide awards for being in the top of it all. Anyway, I love trolling my customers some days. I work downtown Chicago between the Magnificent Mile and Navy Pier. High end kind of area, lots of tourists. It never fails there are days where one of our customers gets angry at me for following company rules, and claims something sexist, or bigoted. 

     Sadly, I'm used to this kind of behavior so it's really easy to just ignore their hate. However, this one guy, he must have been having a really bad day and when I served him his food (He ordered hot food and I made it and brought it out to him.) and he said quite loudly that he wanted a refund because a 'nasty dyke' touched his food and couldn't believe how someone could let 'those people' work there. I snickered a bit and went to give him a refund. Due to my position, I have that power. 

     I never got a chance to give him said refund. My manager was sweeping the lobby at that time and just happened to overhear the conversation. They weren't too happy and promptly kicked him out for harassment. 

     I love my job, and I love being gay. 

     A few other perks include having a super cute girlfriend. Being able to complement girls and not being called a creep. Boobs. Having super cool hair. Boobs! A feeling of security with my partner. Did I mention boobs? 

     haha in all seriousness, it's great, and I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.

New Job

Wow, some days I still just can't believe that I've been a published author for a few years now, but I've always known that it wouldn't be enough, at least not in the beginning. So I've always had a 'day job' as well as working on my writing. 

Today is an incredible day, after working just one year at my current location, I'm now starting as a supervisor. This is great for me. It means more money, more benefits (like health insurance!), and times to come will be a lot more stable. 

So that's good. At least for me. My writing however, will more than likely take the hit. Sadly there are only so many hours in a day. 

Who know's though. This might be what I need to refocus myself. I do have that massive list of things I need to write and I'm getting more ideas every day, so I will have to get myself focused on that. But perhaps writing will go back to being something I really enjoy and can get myself into more so. Books have always been an escape from the outside world for me. My own included.

Back From Vacation

     Sorry there wasn't a warning, I had honestly taken everything with me and fully planned on working over my trip, but as you see that didn't happen. Haha

     So now I'm back, feeling refreshed and ready to rock at life again.

I'd Rather Be Writing

     I'd honestly rather be working on my current commission. I've been doing a lot of word sprints to kick out some decent progress on it. However, my brain has decided to fry because of the heat. It's just after one in the afternoon here and with the heat index it currently feels like 103. I'm not looking forward to going to my day job today, but such is life.

     Why am I writing this then instead of working? Because I at least wanted to get some sort of writing in. I'm also thinking about doing a new 30 day challenge. This next one might be to write a blog post every day. Maybe. Could be, or it could just be me working on more word sprints. Not to sure yet, but I would like to work on setting more goals.

I Saved My Girlfriend by Not Kissing Her

  In today’s world most of us don’t think twice about kissing out loved ones. Especially if they are about to leave for a trip or just away for a few hours. I don’t live near my girlfriend. She lives up in the city, I live outside, but we both go back and forth a lot. My day job is up there in said city, so it’s not like we don’t see one another often. The other day I was taking her to the train station, making it easy on my car instead of back and forth, and we got there early and sat in the car just talking. Sounds normal right? You would again in today’s world not think much of it. If you’re gay, or lesbian, or even trans however, you do actually think twice on things.

     I didn’t kiss her goodbye. It killed me and broke my heart, but let me tell you why.

     The entire time we sat there, two guys in a car next to us watched us. Intently. Not gesturing, not saying anything, just watching. It made my stomach knot. Fear crept into the back of my mind and warning bells went off. Something in my gut told me not to kiss her that day. Something told me not to be gay. She left on the train and I watched her walk through the doors. The moment she got through, one of the guys got out of the car and walked in after her. No bags, luggage, not even a backpack at nine o’clock at night going up to the city. It was odd. It scared me. I actually was afraid that something would happen to her.

     Did anything? No. But then again, I didn’t kiss her either.  

Not Sure Anymore

     I've been working on this blog for quite some time and while I do enjoy doing it, it's been a work in itself and one that I'm not sure where to go or what to do with it from here. I found that I don't like posting Silver Mane here, I'd rather post it on other sites where it would makes more sense. Places where you won't have to click a ton of buttons to go through the whole series. But what really to do with this. I've been here for years and I feel like it's gotten me no where. I haven't made any connections and most days recently it's been feeling like a waste of my time. Time that I could dedicate to writing more books. I just don't know right now what I want to do with this blog anymore.

Sorry

     I know that this one single word doesn't really mean much, nor does it fix anything. But you all deserve an apology. I haven't posted anything for quite some time now. And that's not fair to you all. I will however explain what has been going on that has brought my writing to a screeching halt.

     Life in general this year has been pretty rough. Early this year the love of my life walked out. She left her business, her stuff, even her cat with me. It left me pretty torn up. I've sense been dealing with it and working on getting my own life together. I realized that I lived my life for someone else, and that in the end, didn't make me happy. So on top of dealing with that mess, I have been keeping my job and working very hard towards moving up in my company. So while that's not bad news, it does keep me busy. I've also been tasked with finishing all of the commissions sense "I was the one who was paid for them". Most have been paid for well over a year or two but that's all besides the point. So I'm working my normal job away from home and trying to get those done on my days off.

     I was doing very well on writing every single day, at least one thousand words, but even that fell apart. I woke up late one morning, had an event early the next after a late night shift and it all just went downhill from there.

     In short, it seems like my life is just falling apart. I don't always have access to internet so that doesn't help with posting things. It's just crazy. I do however hope to get back on track soon. Today being a day where I'm actually writing. So I'm trying. Little steps.

Organization

     I keep finding myself running into the same problems week after week and I can't seem to figure out how to fix it. So again, I'm going to try something. I'm a very visual person and it's how I learn easiest. So today, I gathered all my projects and mapped them out in their stages. Perfect. Now that I can see everything it helps.

Two Weeks!

     While I did miss a few days, today is day 14 of my daily writing. As in I have for 14 day's, wrote 1,000 words. I can't even believe it myself. Odd considering I've done NaNoWriMo for a few years now. I always come close (around 30,000 or so) I've never actually won. This little project however, is showing me what I can actually do. It's also been a wonderful help for brainstorming.

Sad news

     The day finally came where a ten hour work day derailed everything. I've cheated myself from making progress. That also sadly means that I didn't get around to finishing up this week's werewolf Wednesday  post. I am however, able to make posts easily here from my 'new' phone. So I can at least do some small things.

Almost 10,000 Words

     While I haven't been as focused on my blog as much. To be honest, I haven't really had a lot to say. At least not about any of this kinda thing. Plenty of other ranting but I don't think you all want to hear about that. Anyway! I have been happily writing at least 1,000 words a day. I just passed day nine today and it feels so good to see those numbers. I mean about 90% of them are just trash and ramblings. Heck one day I even counted down the last ten words by just writing out said words. Sad, but I at least did it. I refused to shortchange myself.

   

1000 Words a Day

     Today starts a new project for me and I'm going to see how it goes. I'm going to write 1,000 words a day. I'm going to wake up and just write 1,000 words. No matter how I feel or what I am going to do otherwise. I was reading this article about how it inspired another author and how it helped with blog posts and what not. I'm hoping to find some of the same magic. I also hope that this will get me some more ideas for these posts as well as my novels. So here's to hoping.

Small Steps

Recently (aka over the past week) I’ve still been working towards getting myself back into the habit of writing. So far so good. I’ve even been able to make some slow progress on “Silver Mane”. Not nearly as much as I would like to, but something is better than nothing.

I also am not sure what else to be posting for these between posts. I want to work on other shorts as well and start cranking out new novels, but focusing on this defiantly takes a good chunk of time away from it. I also don’t want to lose interest in writing this blog and sharing things with you all. I just need more hours in a day it seems. Or at least more focus for those hours.

I’m also wondering if anyone would like to read small one time shorts (under 500 words) here. Not just the ongoing series, but perhaps small tidbits that will tie into novels that I am working on? Perhaps even chapter bits?

Squee

     Alright, so while I can't promise much at this point, I can say this. I'm finally starting to feel better. I can actually focus and breath and not die when I walk. So maybe now I can get back to focusing on writing and working on Silver Mane, I miss it way too much.

     Until then, have a treat. Done by the amazing Cheesigator Arts